I'm sitting in my office in Padelford Hall right now (a grotesquely ugly building, built to withstand sieges, but some lovely views of the Cascades and Lake Washington from the upper storeys; shame I'm in the basement, with a view of the escalator) and we've just been e-mailed a bit of a warning by one of our faculty. Given the horrible things that have happened to international students leaving the country and being denied re-entry, he's suggesting that every international student planning to leave the country for any reason, for any length of time, even if they have a valid visa, should get from the Powers That Be a letter affirming they're real live mathematicians being supported by the department...He says:
According to Steven Olswang, Vice Provost for International Education, "there is not [a] mechanism to obtain, prior to departure, a guarantee of the right to re-enter the United States."
In other words, if you leave, they don't have to let you back in. Even if you're from a cooperative US ally like Poland, which sent special forces into Iraq. Sort of a 'you scratch my back, I'll wipe my boots on yours' arrangement, I suppose.
Here's an article on it, a month old now but still very representative.
Her study is among scores of research projects that have been hampered or derailed by new security procedures for screening foreign visas, enacted in response to 9/11. Hundreds of international scientists, some eminent in their fields, have been blocked from entering the U.S., slowing research on diseases such as AIDS, West Nile virus, Alzheimer's and leukemia, and in areas such as space science, nutrition and genetic mapping.Even research to combat chemical and biological terrorism has been stalled by the visa jam.
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But interviews with dozens of scientists and educators around the country reveal that the problem persists - and may be getting worse, especially with the Iraq war heightening security concerns.
Visa delays and denials are disrupting research at all institutional levels, from public universities, to the National Institutes of Health to the prestigious Mayo Clinic. World-renowned scientists who had visited the U.S. with ease in the past are suddenly finding themselves locked out.
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But scientists and educators complain that consular officers are using vague, arbitrary standards to decide which visa applications to refer for security reviews, trapping legitimate foreign researchers in a frustrating backlog.
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American research has become increasingly dependent on foreign talent because too few U.S. students pursue science, educators say. More than 40 percent of doctorates in the physical sciences go to non-U.S. citizens.
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Educators say a number of foreign students who have encountered long delays have given up and enrolled in universities abroad. William C. Stwalley, head of UConn's physics department, said he believes "most, if not all" of the Chinese physics students denied visas have opted for schools in Canada, England and Australia.
It goes on and on...There's a whole catalogue of research programmes--cancer research, AIDS treatment, a West Nile virus vaccine, Alzheimer's research that could prevent Ronald Reagan from constantly shitting himself, not to mention security projects and particle physics--that have been crippled by State Department refusal to let the researchers back into the country. I fail to see how highly-educated, secular scientists can conceivably represent much of a security threat. What's the State Department afraid they'll do, exactly? Hijack aircraft with their pockets full of lethal chalk? Least-squares-fit Manhattan into rubble? America has become so paranoid it's begun to choke to death intellectually on its own bile.
Canada: it's where it's at. (Tautologically, even, if you define 'it' to be 'Canada'.) Let us all move there now. You know you want to.
Posted by aloysius at April 21, 2003 12:49 PM |